The Olden World

by Czar_Yoshi


Shooting Past

"This," Sharpie growled, fat raindrops drumming on the ground around her, "is extremely embarrassing."

"However, it is certainly effective," Gerardo shot back, shaking his wet, windblown crest away from his eyes. "And you did agree to it. Furthermore, at a glance I would say you are benefiting far more than me."

Sharpie said nothing, her dry mane and suit excellently proving Gerardo's point as the muddy road whizzed by below. She couldn't argue with that.

"Furthermore," Gerardo continued, wings beating periodically to power their glide, "were we to stop now, there wouldn't have been much of a point to doing this to begin with! And as generous and self-sacrificing as I fancy myself, that does seem the slightest bit wasteful of my efforts."

Below the gliding griffon, Sharpie dangled unhappily, two talons clutched around her barrel and holding her as close in Gerardo's rain shadow as possible. In the windless forest corridors of the Earth District, there was no wind to blow rain in from the front or side, and the formation proved effective for both dryness and speed. The cost, of course, was that the pegasus hated being treated like cargo, and Gerardo was having poor luck trying to make her take it better.

"I suppose we could always have stayed in that last town," he chirped, far too upbeat for the pounding rain. "We would at least be certain my friends would still be ahead of us, doing that!"

"Blueleaf is not a vacation town," Sharpie grumbled back, bad options milling around her like sheep. "I did agree to this, okay? Now stop rubbing it in!"

"My apologies!" Wisely, Gerardo closed his beak, letting the rain hiss down in silence as they passed.

"So..." he said eventually, eyes flicking through the dimly-lit foliage. "I presume the weather is a safe topic of conversation? How exactly does a storm of this size manage to come down from the mountains? In more northerly parts of the world, the rule seems to be that it rains when the clouds are going up, not coming back down. I'm foggy on the precise details, but was expecting something a little less..." He chanced a glance at the heavy, dark clouds, showing no signs of letting up on all horizons.

Sharpie shrugged stiffly in his grasp. "Maybe the storms are so big that this is what survives making it up. Maybe the mountains are cursed. Nobody's ever made it far enough to see where they come from and lived to talk about it."

Nobody... except one little filly. Gerardo bit his tongue, letting the conversation die the death it wanted and thinking about Starlight. In exchange for his delivery, the yaks had promised him a writ of passage to the Plains of Harmony... a delivery that was beyond the realm of possibility, or at least too shrouded in risk and mystery to even consider pursuing further. Suppose he succeeded in everything else, in recovering his sword and friends and making an escape unharmed to Riverfall. What then?

Starlight didn't seem inclined to go back, from absolutely everything he had gathered, and he had no intentions of forcing her, but were he to attempt retracing her steps, he would need a guide. How would that work? Would it work? Did it even matter?

It didn't, he decided. Nothing was more important than the immediate goals of staying safe and leaving Ironridge. There would be plenty of time later to find a course of action everyone found fair.

With Sharpie still dangling in his clutches, he soared off down the rainy road, keenly intent on making progress as fast as possible.


"Well, this certainly seems to be a bother."

Gerardo hovered before a crafted archway made of bamboo, carved imagery of acorns adorning both posts. Beyond, the road proceeded straightly, a continuous wall of wooden buildings lining either side, far lower and much further apart than the ones in Blueleaf. He stared down the main street, resisting the instinct to scratch his chin and thereby drop Sharpie in the mud.

"It's Grand Acorn," Sharpie grumbled back, struggling to get more comfortable. "The richest town in the Earth District. Can we find somewhere to wait out this rain? Please? Or at least put me down?"

Gerardo frowned. "Well, yes. But the issue here is that we haven't found my friends yet, and as they surely weren't past this city when the rain began, it means they must now be here..."

"Yes, yes, and we don't want to pass them." Struggling faintly against his hold, Sharpie huffed. "They aren't going to leave before it stops raining if they're here, so we should stop too!"

"...How long do rainstorms like these usually last?" Gerardo asked, hovering in place against the rain.

Sharpie looked at the ground. "Between several hours and two weeks."

"Ah. Well, then, I suppose waiting is out of the question." Gerardo darted forward against her protests, into the city. "Selma informed us we had thirty hours perhaps several hours ago, and I hardly imagine my friends have the means or the desire to stay in one place for that long, especially if this city is indeed affluent. Let us press on to Sosa, and await them there!"

"No!" Sharpie kicked. "We're stopping and you're going to put me down! I need some time to myself or I'm going to freak out! Please..."

"Very well, very well!" Gerardo carefully maintained his grip on the thrashing pegasus, soaring upward and adjusting his course slightly east. "We'll find an awning and camp the exit, then. At the very least, will that suffice?"

"Yesss..." Sharpie whined, eager to be free.


Pow!

Sharpie exploded from Gerardo's grasp the moment the town's eastern exit drew near, zipping under the eaves of what looked like a plumbing store with far more speed than she had exhibited while traveling earlier. Huffing, she sat, putting her back to the building and meticulously preening, straightening the crumples in her suit and furrows in her fur where the griffon's talons had grabbed her.

"...You are all right, of course?" Gerardo asked, gliding up beside her and landing a safe distance away. "I'm sure you were able to see the necessity of-"

"Leave it. Please." Sharpie didn't raise her head to look at him. "I know I have issues, okay? You're not the only one who has to deal with them." She heaved a fast, noisy sigh, and massaged her temple. "I need a vacation so badly... All I want is to do one thing that lets me feel like I actually helped this miserable, forsaken pit of a city and me and Brightcoil are out of here. One more thing... one more thing..." She started mumbling, shivered, and continued. Gerardo frowned sympathetically.

He didn't dare do anything, though. So, leaving the pegasus to her sulking, he took up an eastward vigil, watching the gate to the road to Sosa like a soggy sentinel and hoping against luck that his lost friends would walk by.